Conventional saddles generally include a rigid tree made of metal, or of metal-reinforced wood, or perhaps of synthetic material, with webbing stretched thereover to support a traditional covering of leather which may be fixed to the tree by tacking (for example). The tree should normally be sufficiently rigid to ensure that the withers of the horse are permanently disengaged while simultaneously maintaining the saddle in shape, with the tree constituting the frame of the saddle. A saddle including such a tree is thus, by its very nature, incapable of adapting either to the morphology of the horse, or else to the morphology of the rider. That is why, in conventional saddles, the shape of the tree is a compromise between the various possible shapes of the backs of horses, and a given type of saddle is sometimes provided in several different sizes corresponding to different sizes of rider.
The drawbacks of such saddles stem from their structure: either the tree is rigid enough to ensure that the withers are left free and to retain the shape of the saddle, in which case the weight of the rider is not necessarily evenly distributed over the back of the horse to the detriment of the rider's equilibrium, or else the tree is relatively flexible, in which case the saddle deforms under the weight of the rider and the tree may come into contact with the withers. There is thus a tendency to prefer a saddle having a rigid tree with padding and stuffing applied thereto in order to ensure that the saddle bears properly onto the horse's back and also in order to improve the rider's equilibrium.
These conventional solutions nevertheless suffer from drawbacks specific thereto, since they increase the weight and the thickness of the saddle and they move the rider further away from the horse's back which is detrimental to rider stability and equilibrium.
In order to mitigate these drawbacks, French patent number 83 13 317 proposes a solution which is very different from traditional techniques, whereby a tree which is rigid but which is also thin and as light as possible is placed between two molded parts of a cellular plastic material which is light, shock absorbing, and non-slip, said parts respectively constituting the seat and the underside of the saddle. A saddle of this type provides improved rider equilibrium by virtue of its reduced thickness and its non-slip properties, and it also adapts more easily than a conventional saddle to the morphology of the rider and to the morphology of the horse by virtue of the flexibility of its upper and lower parts made of plastic foam. However, over its entire length, the rigidity of the tree counteracts this flexibility and serves essentially, as in traditional saddles, to ensure that the withers are left free and is itself incapable of adapting to the morphology of the horse or to the morphology of the rider.
Preferred embodiments of the present invention provide a new saddle which avoids the drawbacks of conventional rigid-tree saddles while retaining their advantages.